1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the consumption of content, particularly although not exclusively the distribution, rendering and decryption of content having digital rights such as copyright therein.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Typically, content such as video, audio or textual data is consumed by a user via a terminal such as a rendering machine. A rendering machine transforms the data defining the content into a form which may be interpreted by a user's senses. Thus, content in the form of video may be rendered on a visual display unit or monitor, audio content may be rendered by a stereo system and a printer used to render textual content, to name but a few examples. In many cases, such as the distribution of content recorded on magnetic media, optical disk or the like, a number of steps will take place in rendering the data to a form suitable for interpretation by a user's senses.
With the advent of digital content distribution, the opportunity has arisen for faultless replication of content to be carried out. Clearly, without appropriate controls, such replication or copying can take place without the agreement of a content relevant right's holder/owner. A particular challenge to the content generating community, which includes record companies, publishers and other right holders, is the ease with which digital content may be disseminated, particularly over networks. This ease of dissemination is also coupled with the fact that there is little or no degradation in the quality of the content despite repeated copying and forwarding of the content in its original format. Thus, unauthorized copies of copyrighted content will meet the same high expectations of consumers in relation to the authorized content.
Consequently, many approaches have been implemented and are being developed to protect such content for rendering on a particular rendering machine. A particularly favored approach (FIG. 3) is to provide each rendering machine 2 with a globally unique tamperproof identity 4 and to incorporate a Digital Rights Management (DRM) engine 6 into the device 2. Subsequently, content stored in encrypted form on the device 2 may be unlocked only where license conditions, including a requirement to confirm that the globally unique identity 4 of the device 2 matches a set of binding attributes in the license, are met.